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Thread: "Disabled" vs. "Read-only"
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From: Cliff Tyllick
Date: Fri, Jan 04 2008 1:30PM
Subject: "Disabled" vs. "Read-only"
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Our developers have informed me of a problem with the forms in one of our Web applications. We have designated fields as disabled, because the user cannot edit them and we do not want the tab to stop in them. But, in IE, the text in these fields shows up in such a light shade of gray that the color contrast ratio fails miserably---as low as 1.5:1 for portions of plain text; no better than 2.4:1 for bold text. Low-vision users, including at least one person at our agency with normal vision but a bright office, have trouble even seeing the text.
I'm told we could fix the contrast problem by making the fields read-only---but then they would look and, with respect to tab order, act just like editable fields. So then users would be misled about their function.
Anyone else dealt with this tightrope? Any successes?
From: Steve Green
Date: Fri, Jan 04 2008 1:40PM
Subject: Re: "Disabled" vs. "Read-only"
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We had a different problem with disabled fields. It's a couple of years ago
but my recollection is that a user with voice recognition software was able
to give focus to the field and could not understand why they could not
change the contents.
One solution is to display the data as plain text rather than as a form
control. It may take a bit more coding but it would solve all your problems
from the user's perspective. If the data cannot be changed, I can't see why
it would need to be a form control.
Steve
From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Fri, Jan 04 2008 2:10PM
Subject: Re: "Disabled" vs. "Read-only"
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Steve Green wrote:
> One solution is to display the data as plain text rather than as a
> form control. It may take a bit more coding but it would solve all
> your problems from the user's perspective.
Right. It would avoid the risk of being understood as something that the
user should modify. (It can be frustrating to see something that you
recognize as input field but find yourself unable to do anything about.)
> If the data cannot be
> changed, I can't see why it would need to be a form control.
Except that it might be data being passed through the form, typically
from one form submission to another. This is probably not the case if a
disabled field now works functionally (since disabled fields are not
part of the form data), but if you have a readonly field, then it is
included in the form data. And if it _needs_ to be in the data, you just
have to use an <input type="hidden" ...> field. It simply adds to the
form data, without affecting the form rendering. If you also need to
present that data to the user, you simply use normal content for that.
This means data duplication, like
Name: John Doe
<input type="hidden" name="name" value="John Doe">
but that's not big problem, especially if you're generating the form
dynamically, as you probably are in this scenario.
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
From: Robinson, Norman B
Date: Fri, Jan 04 2008 2:20PM
Subject: Re: "Disabled" vs. "Read-only"
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The best course of action is to simply not provide the _fields_
at all - if they don't provide information.
Otherwise, if you can't edit them, you don't want them in tab
order, but they supply information then write them as part of the web
content. Don't make them a form element.
Hope I'm understanding your question!
Regards,
Norman B. Robinson
Office of Accessible Systems and Technology
Department of Homeland Security
email: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = or = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
v: 202-447-0322; c: 202-834-3192; fax: 202-447-0582